Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 Review

Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 is a roguelike action RPG where you'll play as one of six characters (starting off as three) in search of an artist whose painting has unleashed chaos.

The story of the game is vague and barely has a narrative to drive it, which is acceptable for this type of game as it's more gameplay-focused. What little elements of the story you get are shown to you in comic-book style slides, though not much occurs in them to really impact the story.

At the start of the game, you get to choose between three characters: the Detective, the Scientist, and the Witch. Later on, as you play through the levels, you'll discover three new characters: the Veteran, the Medium, and the Alienist. Each character has their own unique weapons, throwables, secondary attacks, and gear that they can equip, giving each character a unique playstyle. Although I enjoyed how vastly different these characters played due to the limitations each one had, I found the imbalance rather disappointing, as it feels like characters with heavier and faster attacks were far superior to others. This led to me being stuck playing either the Detective due to his shotgun (especially late game with some gear), the Witch due to her skull doing obscene amounts of damage without a long reload time, or the Veteran due to his sniper rifle. The strength of the attack behind each character was a big part of the fun, and some of them, such as the Medium, were too feeble to play.

This is where the first problem most people have with Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 — the balancing isn't the greatest. I'd like to make a disclaimer: I did not start playing the game until after the first patch was released on the 29th of September. My experience with the balancing wasn't the worst, but it certainly feels like a steeper challenge than other games; the main character moves a bit slowly, and some enemies (especially the hellish crabs) run far too fast for you to get away from them. It feels like Lovecraft's Untold Stories tries to screw you over at every turn of the corner — the characters move slow whilst enemies move fast, the floor is riddled with hard-to-see hazards that can deal high amounts of damage, defensive abilities aren't the best, the game instantly kills you with a sanity meter... and yet, I love the difficulty.

I jumped into Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 warily, as I'd seen the mostly negative reviews it had received. I really wanted this game to be good, and although I got stuck for the first four hours, my relentless journalist willpower got me through it. This isn't me saying that the game is bad — this is me giving you a friendly warning: if you want to like the game, I seriously suggest you search any question you have online because the game's biggest downfall is the absolute lack of tutorials. 

Perhaps it might be the only flaw because the gameplay loop was very fun and incredibly rewarding. You get to keep each item you get that you did not consume that run, meaning that, gradually, you will perform better and be more equipped for each new run. I was worried about the medicinal supplies running scarce, but after randomly unlocking the way to craft them, I had an obscenely high amount of med kits to heal myself for minor injuries. 

The way the game starts is harsh because you have no way to defend yourself against most encounters, but once you start gaining some momentum, the more annoying mechanics get solved; the game really rewards perseverance and persistence. As an example, I hated the acid spilt on the floor that would burn me for what seemed like two hours, but after receiving an item to make me immune to acid, it stopped being an issue. Poison seemed like a bother, too, until I learned how to craft an injection that cures it. Unlike other games that sell you a solution to the roadblock, Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 gives trials and forces you to deal with them until you find a solution.

Is the game perfect? Absolutely not. The starting difficulty is a bit steep for the first hour or two, especially due to the lack of tutorials and explanation of the gameplay loop. Aside from that, there are still some bugs present in the game, though none have been game-breaking and seemed to benefit me for the most part (like, for instance, keeping supplies I used in a run after I died). But once you've managed to get a good run going, start getting items, understand how you're expected to play, and have endured the arduous hour or two of gameplay, it's more than decent — it's fun. I enjoyed the bosses, the encounters, getting items for my favourite character, and dying to get stronger. I didn't expect to like Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 (although I had certainly really hoped I would), and for the first four hours of being lost, I was fully ready to give it a bad score until I learned that the problem wasn't in the game; it was in how I was trying to play it.